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Environmental science is primarily concerned with assessing the impacts of changing environmental conditions on the state of the natural world, whether affected by natural variability or by the impact of human activity. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has recently published its digital strategy1, the first of its kind for NERC, which sets out a vision for digitally enabled environmental science for the next decade. This is echoed in the Met Office’s Research and Innovation Strategy that includes the vision of transforming the weather and climate research and services through deploying transformative technologies such as Digital Twins2. This strategy places data and digital technologies at the heart of UK environmental science. One such set of technologies are digital twins. A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or system (for example the natural environment) updated as the system changes using observations. Observations may come from a range of sources, some traditionally used in the environmental science community such as satellite remote sensing or sensors on ships or weather stations, or through the emergence of sensors on everything from fridges to cars to large-scale built infrastructure. A digital twin then uses simulations or data-based methods such as machine learning to generate a replica (‘twin’) of the system that can be used to understand the system itself. Environmental digital twins therefore have the potential to significantly improve our understanding of the natural environment. The emergence of increasingly large, diverse, observed data sources and the development of digital twin technologies combined provides an opportunity for the environmental science community to make a step-change in our understanding of the environment. But to realise the value of environmental digital twins they need to be developed following agreed standards to make sure the information can be trusted by the user, and so that data from twins

Environmental science is primarily concerned with assessing the impacts of changing environmental conditions on the state of the natural world. The UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has recently published its digital strategy , the first of its kind for NERC, which sets out a vision for digitally enabled environmental science for the next decade. This is echoed in the UK Met Office’s Research and Innovation Strategy that includes the vision of transforming the weather and climate research and services through deploying transformative technologies such as Digital Twins . This strategy places data and digital technologies at the heart of UK environmental science. One such set of technologies are digital twins. Environmental digital twins have the potential to significantly improve our understanding of the natural environment. The emergence of increasingly large, diverse, observed data sources and the development of digital twin technologies combined provides an opportunity for the environmental science community to make a step-change in our understanding of the environment. But to realise the value of environmental digital twins they need to be developed following agreed standards where interoperability is required to make sure the information can be trusted by the user, and so that data from twins can be shared. To enable this, an information management framework (IMF) is needed that establishes the components for effective information management within and across the digital twin ecosystem. It must enable secure, resilient interoperability of data, and is a reference point to facilitate data use in line with security, legal, commercial, privacy and other relevant concerns. We present recommendations for the development of an IMF for Environmental digital twins (IMFe) including the application of concepts such as an asset commons and balanced approach to standards to facilitate minimum interoperability requirements between twins while iteratively impleme

Collection of zooplankton is done using a wide array of instrumentation. To ensure the long-term value of zooplankton data, metadata about what the data are and when, where, and how the data were collected, plus the use of a domain-specific, controlled vocabulary is essential. It is especially important to use a controlled “deployment” vocabulary when plankton nets are used to collect data, and here we present a vocabulary of net deployment terms.

Demand by governments and scientists is increasing for indicators of CO2-related variables for the ocean. We describe a recent project, CARBON-OPS, during which a "supply chain" was developed for automated measurement of pCO(2) in the surface of the ocean, data processing, and its use in providing information for research and policy development. Data are gathered by new pCO(2) measurement systems on five UK research ships in the Southern Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and northwestern European shelf seas. These send data in near-real-time, via satellite communication systems, to the British Oceanographic Data Centre, where they are automatically processed, quality controlled, and archived. The data are then delivered to the UK Met Office and others for use in testing predictions from operational ocean models. These models will generate indicator products and assist government through the Marine Climate Change Impact Partnership, a partnership of scientists, government, its agencies, and NGOs, by providing information on ocean CO2 uptake, changes in ocean pH, and potential impacts on global climate and marine ecosystems

We report the results of an experiment in the Northeast Atlantic in which sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) was released within an eddy and the behaviour of trace gases, nutrients and productivity followed within a Lagrangian framework over a period of 24 days. Measurements were also made in the air above the eddy in order to estimate air–sea exchange rates for some components. The physical, biological and biogeochemical properties of the eddy resemble those of other eddies studied in this area, suggesting that the results we report may be applicable beyond the specific eddy studied. During a period of low wind speed at the start of the experiment, we are able to quantitatively describe and balance the nutrient and carbon budgets for the eddy. We also report concentrations of various trace gases in the region which are similar to those observed in other studies and we estimate exchange rates for several trace gases. We show that the importance of gas exchange over other loss terms varies with time and also varies for the different gases. We show that the various trace gases considered (CO\(_2\), dimethyl sulphide (DMS), N\(_2\)O, CH\(_4\), non-methane-hydrocarbons, methyl bromide, methyl iodide and volatile selenium species) are all influenced by physical and biological processes, but the overall distribution and temporal variability of individual gases are different to one another. A storm disrupted the stratification in the eddy during the experiment, resulting in enhanced nutrient supply to surface waters, enhanced gas exchange rates and a change in plankton community, which we quantify, although overall productivity was little changed. Emphasis is placed on the regularity of storms in the temperate ocean and the importance of these stochastic processes in such systems.

We report the results of an experiment in the Northeast Atlantic in which sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) was released within an eddy and the behaviour of trace gases, nutrients and productivity followed within a Lagrangian framework over a period of 24 days. Measurements were also made in the air above the eddy in order to estimate air–sea exchange rates for some components. The physical, biological and biogeochemical properties of the eddy resemble those of other eddies studied in this area, suggesting that the results we report may be applicable beyond the specific eddy studied. During a period of low wind speed at the start of the experiment, we are able to quantitatively describe and balance the nutrient and carbon budgets for the eddy. We also report concentrations of various trace gases in the region which are similar to those observed in other studies and we estimate exchange rates for several trace gases. We show that the importance of gas exchange over other loss terms varies with time and also varies for the different gases. We show that the various trace gases considered (CO\(_2\), dimethyl sulphide (DMS), N\(_2\)O, CH\(_4\), non-methane-hydrocarbons, methyl bromide, methyl iodide and volatile selenium species) are all influenced by physical and biological processes, but the overall distribution and temporal variability of individual gases are different to one another. A storm disrupted the stratification in the eddy during the experiment, resulting in enhanced nutrient supply to surface waters, enhanced gas exchange rates and a change in plankton community, which we quantify, although overall productivity was little changed. Emphasis is placed on the regularity of storms in the temperate ocean and the importance of these stochastic processes in such systems.

We report the results of an experiment in the Northeast Atlantic in which sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) was released within an eddy and the behaviour of trace gases, nutrients and productivity followed within a Lagrangian framework over a period of 24 days. Measurements were also made in the air above the eddy in order to estimate air–sea exchange rates for some components. The physical, biological and biogeochemical properties of the eddy resemble those of other eddies studied in this area, suggesting that the results we report may be applicable beyond the specific eddy studied. During a period of low wind speed at the start of the experiment, we are able to quantitatively describe and balance the nutrient and carbon budgets for the eddy. We also report concentrations of various trace gases in the region which are similar to those observed in other studies and we estimate exchange rates for several trace gases. We show that the importance of gas exchange over other loss terms varies with time and also varies for the different gases. We show that the various trace gases considered (CO\(_2\), dimethyl sulphide (DMS), N\(_2\)O, CH\(_4\), non-methane-hydrocarbons, methyl bromide, methyl iodide and volatile selenium species) are all influenced by physical and biological processes, but the overall distribution and temporal variability of individual gases are different to one another. A storm disrupted the stratification in the eddy during the experiment, resulting in enhanced nutrient supply to surface waters, enhanced gas exchange rates and a change in plankton community, which we quantify, although overall productivity was little changed. Emphasis is placed on the regularity of storms in the temperate ocean and the importance of these stochastic processes in such systems.

We report the results of an experiment in the Northeast Atlantic in which sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) was released within an eddy and the behaviour of trace gases, nutrients and productivity followed within a Lagrangian framework over a period of 24 days. Measurements were also made in the air above the eddy in order to estimate air–sea exchange rates for some components. The physical, biological and biogeochemical properties of the eddy resemble those of other eddies studied in this area, suggesting that the results we report may be applicable beyond the specific eddy studied. During a period of low wind speed at the start of the experiment, we are able to quantitatively describe and balance the nutrient and carbon budgets for the eddy. We also report concentrations of various trace gases in the region which are similar to those observed in other studies and we estimate exchange rates for several trace gases. We show that the importance of gas exchange over other loss terms varies with time and also varies for the different gases. We show that the various trace gases considered (CO\(_2\), dimethyl sulphide (DMS), N\(_2\)O, CH\(_4\), non-methane-hydrocarbons, methyl bromide, methyl iodide and volatile selenium species) are all influenced by physical and biological processes, but the overall distribution and temporal variability of individual gases are different to one another. A storm disrupted the stratification in the eddy during the experiment, resulting in enhanced nutrient supply to surface waters, enhanced gas exchange rates and a change in plankton community, which we quantify, although overall productivity was little changed. Emphasis is placed on the regularity of storms in the temperate ocean and the importance of these stochastic processes in such systems.